THE JAPANESE MAKE THE MOST beautiful handkerchiefs. They’re a good, generous sensible size, too. And they’re oh-so versatile. You can mop your brow in the humid weather. You can take care of the odd spill in a restaurant. You can wipe a child’s mouth after a meal (your own child, I mean—I’m not suggesting you look around and see where you can help out). You can dry your hands after a visit to the loo if there’s no paper or towels available. You can polish your eye glasses. I could go on and on, but it’s sometimes best to leave a little to the imagination.
If you’re into irony, it’s a lovely example that the Japanese handkerchief, beautiful as it is, is not actually designed for nose-blowing. The Japanese use paper tissues for this purpose, little packets of which are often handed out at railway stations, presumably as some kind of promotion. In any case, nose-blowing is a very private activity for the Japanese, who are rendered uncomfortable by the thought— or sight—of Westerners emptying the contents of their nasal cavities into a piece of cloth which is then stuffed into a pocket to be re-used through the day. (Although, from reading the blogs of young travellers to Japan, it would seem globalisation has brought young Japanese attitudes to nose-blowing into close alignment with the West.) For the older generation of Japanese, at least, it remains preferable—indeed it’s totally okay—to sniff loudly all day than to dispose of the offending phlegm in the Western way.
In Japan handkerchiefs are sold everywhere, from train stations and the equivalent of our $2 shops to very fancy department stores. In the latter, handkerchiefs of every conceivable design and colour cater to an immense range of tastes. In one of those ground-floor hanky departments you can easily spend hundreds of dollars—rivalled only by what you might go on to spend in stationery. Handkerchiefs are ideal gifts, too—small, light, attractive.
It used to be my custom, after my many trips to Japan, to bring back some of these delicate cloths for my young daughter-in-law, who’d always smile and beam graciously. I took her response at face value and was delighted that she shared my love of these small, square Japanese cloths.
It turns out all that smiling and beaming were politeness in action. One day my son, putting on his uncomfortable look—the one he uses when he wants to tell me something that he thinks I might not want to hear—said, ‘Mum, about those hankies you always bring home from Japan . . . well it’s nice of you . . . (pause) and they’re very pretty and all that . . . but young people today . . . um . . . don’t use hankies.’
‘Why on earth not?’ I shot back, amazed.
He said, ‘Well I could beat around the bush, but . . . to be honest, to cut to the chase . . . who wants to blow snot into a bit of material and then carry it around all day?’
So there you have it—the generation X perspective on the boomer handkerchief. As cross-culturally distinct as anything an anthropologist could come up with. Indeed, ironically, it’s quite an old-fashioned Japanese reaction!
There’s comfort, perhaps, to be taken in the fact that the handkerchief is not alone in having nearly had its day. Items like the cravat, the cufflink and the armband seem all to have had their day, too.
The last of these, armbands, were worn above the elbow, and their purpose was to keep the shirt cuffs at an appropriate height. There was a Depression-era version of the metal armband created from the cut-off ends of old rubber gloves. These did the trick, though for aesthetic reasons they were worn under a suit coat rather than displayed proudly like their upmarket cousins.
Armbands were especially loved by left-handers in the messy old days of ink. That was the time of the nib, the inkwell, blotting paper and the old-fashioned refillable fountain pen with its bladder that sucked up ink from the bottle. Such circumstantial niceties meant that you simply could not have your cuffs trailing onto the paper as you wrote. Enter armbands, to great applause.
Now, I know the world of vogue recycles these sorts of items when a decade suddenly becomes fashionably nostalgic or the in-thing for fancy dress. Hey, Mum, do you have any of those big shoulder pads they used to wear in the eighties? It’s not the mainstay item that, say, the hanky was in the past. I’m sure I’m not alone, however, in hoping that current fashion items like low-cut, crack-exposing pants will not come back in a hurry, even for a short re-run.
Still, when these items do come back, it’s only for a season and it’s as expensive little frivolous accoutrement. Like these armbands, available online as per this advertisement: ‘Men’s Armbands: Available in gold or silver colour, these armbands will easily stretch comfortably over most arms, to hold your shirt cuffs safely away from your plate. Both functional and stylish, they make a perfect gift for the man about town.’
While our handkerchief sections in department stores and so on are nothing like the Japanese ones, they still exist, though I imagine there will come a day when they won’t. They’ll go the way of haberdashery and mercery.
The word ‘handkerchief ’ dates from the early 16th century. It comes from ‘kerchief ’, first recorded in 1223, and derived from the Old French couvrechief, where couvrir is to cover and chief is the head. By the time handkerchief came along, people were presumably familiar enough with the idea of a cloth on the head to manage the contradiction of a name that combines two references to separate parts of the body (hand, head), and maintains the French sense of cover yet means something rather different—namely a piece of cloth that you hold in your hand, when you don’t have it in a pocket, and that you use to mop up various body wastes.
When my daughter was recently packing for a gap-year trip, at the last minute she said, ‘Can I take one of your hankies?’ Sure, I said, delighted that she’d come to see their value. I must’ve made one of those smug told-you-so kind of sounds, because she continued by saying, ‘I’m not going to use it—it’s just to remind me of you.’
I’m not one for lamenting (though I like the word, so much better than ‘bemoan’), but if I was, I’d no doubt lament that if hankies completely go, how will little children ever play ‘Drop the hanky’? For those who don’t know, this old children’s game goes like this: All the players stand in a circle facing each other. One specially chosen child walks slowly around the outside of the circle, eventually dropping the handkerchief at the feet of one of the players. That player then spins around, picks it up and chases the hanky-dropper, who races around the circle and tries to capture the other person’s space without getting tagged. I suppose that when mobile phones go rubbery they can drop them instead of hankies.
Another function of the handkerchief, as featured in sexist legends, Jane Austen–era literature and on the Shakespearean stage, is its use as a dramatic device, or more broadly as a social broker. The woman drops the handkerchief and the gentleman picks it up, graciously returning it to its owner. This may then lead on to small talk that may then flow on seamlessly to a fully-fledged conversation, which may then lead to some, well, hanky-panky. Or you could go straight to the hanky-panky, forgoing the conversation in your rush.
The handkerchief found in a suspicious place does powerful things to an already jealous lover (ask Othello). Those given to making obtuse links between social events might suggest a connection between the demise of the hanky-mediated panky and the rise of internet dating. One story ends, another begins. A fading word, a lost practice, a new technology.